Living the dream.

Sitting here, glass of wine in hand. With my hub and my friend. Kids in the basement – can barely hear them. Oh no, someone brought up politics.

There goes the moment.

Hello – have we met?

So isn’t there always that person that never remembers you? Okay, maybe you’re more memorable than I am. You probably are.

But for me? This happens.

Especially this one person.

I’ve met her, say, 25 times? I’m really not exaggerating. Andrew and I met her out of town – she is related to someone we knew when we lived somewhere else. And then? We re-met her here. And she is a family friend of our friends, so we’ve seen her at lots of social occasions.

So when I saw her this weekend and she looked at me with that blank look, I had to laugh to myself.

What gives?

What I learned at the ESPN Zone.

I suck.

I suck at video games.

I suck at driving games; car, motorcycle, luge.

I suck at fight games and shooting games (both basketball and skeet).

And then, going with 3 boys and a husband just makes it even more impossible to look good.

I must say, I rock at Air Hockey. But who gives a crap about Air Hockey?

Pitstop.

I’m home. Yup. Home. For a whopping 36 hours. Just enough time to hug the kids, do the laundry, play mini-golf, read my email, have dinner out, watch a movie, do more laundry, blog, read the mail (yikes!), and pack.

I thought I’d share a few highlights of New Orleans before I jump right back on that (hopefully maintained) Southwest plane for The Windy City for another whirlwind (no pun intended) trip.

Of course we went to Cafe du Monde for cafe au lait and beingets.

I would have taken the before picture, but there was no time. I just could not control myself. These things are just beyond good. Frankly, had we not been in public, I might have eaten the powdered sugar with my coffee spoon. Or just licked it. OMG.

I don’t even know if this was Harrah’s or some club. But it sure is a NOLA theme….

This was outside Harrah’s. I love palm trees. Lucky for us, the weather was amazing and we had some free time to enjoy it!

At Jacques Imo’s, they served these muffins before we even ordered. The picture does not do it justice. It was amazing. Not low fat, trust me.

And a split second later, it was gone. This meal was terrific. I had barbecued shrimp that they are famous for. The meal was great. Andrew could tell you more. I’m no food blogger. But I sure like to eat.

These oysters were deep fried and sauced and whoknowswhat else. Mighty fine.

Walking past the House of Blues. We walked a ton. I’m so glad I brought comfortable shoes!

These folks were off the band’s bus. We don’t know who they were, but they ended up in the photo.

Everywhere you look, masks, masks, masks.

I liked this display.

We had another great meal at Herbsaint and I highly (I mean highly) recommend it if you’re heading down that way. Our last night, we had crawfish at Big Al’s Seafood Restaurant – a bit out of the way at 1377 Annunciation. I was surprised how hard it was to find crawfish downtown. Fun meal. Messy, but fun.

Oh and we had oysters, grilled and raw at Felix’s.

With all this walking and eating, you might be surprised that we had time to do anything else.

Like work.

But we did. We spoke to an enthusiastic audience about market research and attended a day’s worth of events at the Smart Marketing conference.

Off to pack. Back soon!

I am so out of here!

On my way to the Big Easy. Just me and my guy.

What will I do with the kids, you ask? My parents (brave souls) are coming to stay with them until we get back. I sure hope we don’t (wink, wink) decide to stay over a few extra days after our work is finished.

Once upon a time.

A long, long time ago, I thought maybe I wanted to be a photographer. So I took a class in college. Turns out, I didn’t have the patience for it.

But what I do have to show for my efforts is a pile of black and white memories.

This one is a wonderful friend of mine. I don’t know if I took the photo in Richmond or if it was in New York. Maybe he does. (If so, let me know!)

I have others. Self-portraits, college friends and more. Looking through them brings back a flood of emotions. Each one reminds me of stories and situations. Each one means something to me.

I know that when I took them, it could not have been possible for me to know that 20-some years later, I’d see them again. More than that, it would have been impossible to know what I would be like now. What I think. Who I am.

At 20, life is all about being 20. There’s no 40-something. Hell, there’s no 30-something.

I guess it’s kind of nice in a way. To be able to be in life so gung-ho, so fully with no consideration of anything later. Because nothing later seems real. Or imaginable.

Sure, we were all working hard in school so we could land good jobs and start a career path. But it was just words. There was no way to know what it really was.

But here I am.

And though I’m no photographer, life is good.

Who has Style? Sports?

We get 3 newspapers delivered most days. The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and the Examiner.

Every morning, there is a scramble to see who gets the ‘good’ sections first. The kids all compete for Style and Sports in the Post. On Wednesdays, there is a fight over the Food section.  Only one of the boys reads cover-to-cover.  (And that’s okay; it’s kind of scary anyway, don’t you think?)

Andrew likes to take the Journal to the gym, but not until I’ve checked it out. Even if he leaves early, he leaves me the Marketplace and Personal Journal sections. Thanks, hon.

Sure, we can read all the news we want online. And we do! But there is still something about a real print newspaper.

Do you still read the paper?